A survey of 500 global senior marketing professionals has revealed that, by 2020, more marketers expect to interact directly with customers through technology and personalisation, than indirectly through media and advertising.
The survey, conducted for the second year by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of Marketo, shows that 86% of the chief marketing officers and senior marketing executives approached say they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020.
However, in order to accomplish this target, marketing leaders must be able to have a single view of the customer to engage in two-way personalised conversations.
“Technology’s rapid evolution allows customers to engage with brands across myriad new channels in real time, translating to billions of marketing-driven touch points,” said Marketo chief marketing officer Sanjay Dholakia.
“With 86% of CMOs and other marketing leaders of the mind that they will own the customer experience by 2020, it is essential that organisations maintain a singular, comprehensive view of their customers. This is the key to building enduring customer relationships and ultimately successful brands.”
More than half of respondents believe that the accelerating pace of technological change, mobile lifestyles, and an explosion of potential marketing channels via the Internet of Things (IoT) will change the field the most by 2020, by which time the top channels will be social media at 63%, followed by the web (53%), mobile apps (47%) and mobile web (46%).
Raising customer loyalty and better brand perception are the two top benefits (both 53%) marketers aim to realise through a more positive customer experience, while mobile devices and networks (59%), personalisation technologies (45%), and IoT (39%) are the three technology-specific trends that will have the biggest impact on marketing organisations by 2020.
Looking at Europe, 90% of respondents in the area say they will own end-to-end customer experience by the end of the decade, while all sizes of European firms will diverge on tactics to focus on personalised customer experience and dialogue.
The report, titled ‘The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience’, is put together by the EIU which provides analysis on worldwide marketing trends and strategies.
